A little while ago I came across a local story in my news feed about a St. Louis area police officer. He had been arrested for excessive use of a belt with his children. This brought back a host of childhood memories. I shared the article and my memories with my four brothers. Like me, they had many war stories about growing up with our parents. Both our parents, but especially our mother, were strong believers in and practitioners of the old axiom “spare the rod, spoil the child.” Today they would most likely be visited by various governmental services. However, their attitude and behavior were common for their time and generation. Most Boomers have similar stories.
In my darker moments I sometimes comment that my parents were very good at taking an innocent little boy, me, and turning him into a neurotic. They then had the audacity to turn him loose into the wilds of North America. On the other hand I remember a graduate level psychology course I took. The professor made the statement that only 25% of the population operates at a healthy level; he used a Freudian term for psychosexual development, the genital stage. I remember thinking at the time, “that is high!” His point was that full mental health in our society is not the norm. Most of us have to have coping mechanisms to get through the day…and the night.
After we had spent some time passing around war stories, I thought that I really do not want to leave it at this level of negativity. I attempted to solicit some positive memories of our childhood from my siblings. I had less than stellar results. Of course, at this point, all of us are old farts (yes, you too #5). Our mental pathways are very use to running the same well worn cerebral highways, functional or not.
I shared with them my not so original theory of the multi-generational snowball tumbling down the hill of time. It seems our snowball has picked up lots of sticks, rocks and other garbage. Again, I think this is more normal than an un-marred snowball. When I get to thinking wistful thoughts about my upbringing, and how I wished it had been different, I try to imagine what the two souls I somewhat helped in upbringing would say about me. I think I put more than a few sticks and rocks in their snowball. This does not make me feel particularly better, but it does give a feeling of forgiveness about my parents.
I want to believe that my parents were doing the best they knew how to do. I would like to think I was doing the best I knew how also, yet I know I fell way short of this goal. It is at this point I begin to ponder what my parents would be listing if they had a list of positives and negatives of their parents from their childhood. These reflected images in a mirror can go back for generations. Heck, I am probably dealing with issues created by Old Tom Rush back in England in the 1500s. It feels like I have spent most of my adult life attempting to work through issues from my childhood, and I am not there yet. I’m not really sure if I had another 50 years I could grab the brass ring of the 25% fully mentally healthy.
If all this rambling has a point, questionable, perhaps it would be about acceptance and forgiveness for ourselves and those before us. And most importantly it would be about living in the here and now for that is all we really have.
Keep well.
There’s a brass ring? Nobody told me.